the little blue engine that could pulling the train of toys over the mountain

Book Update #4: Chugging Through Copyediting

Slow and steady publishes the book

It's published! Read more here.

My book has been copyedited!

That means my book is chugging along like the little engine that could: I think I can I think I can, and if we keep chugging, we will slowly, slowly climb over the mountain to publication.

(Read the book announcement, about the writing process, finishing the manuscript, the revision process, and the cover reveal, pub date, and page proofs.)

What happens in editing and production?

This stage means that the manuscript is relatively final—I turned it in, it went through peer review, my editor gave comments, I revised, my editor commented, I revised more. Now, most of the work is in the hands of my publisher, Columbia University Press (CUP). I give some input, but they're the ones hard at work right now.

At this stage, we have settled on a title: Grad School Life: Surviving and Thriving Beyond Coursework and Research

The manuscript went to the copyeditor. I got the copyeditor's edits, comments, and questions back last week. I have a couple weeks to read and respond. I also need to supply the final back material soon (e.g., the acknowledgements).

There's no book cover yet, but it's coming. I filled out a design questionnaire to give preliminary input. I'm excited to see what the designer comes up with!

After copyediting, the production editor gets the manuscript ready for composition and typesetting. The goal is to have page proofs by mid-October. Then there's indexing.

After that, it's a marketing game! I've returned CUP's questionnaires about marketing plans and cover copy. We'll talk at some point about the details, I suspect in October or later.

And then… I'm not sure what the schedule is! I expect it'll depend on exactly how quickly we get through it all, and on the timeline of other books in CUP's pipeline.



close up of embroidered flowers on black fabric

Modern Quality: Where Do We Get Beautiful Things?

If you go to any major store, most of the stuff you can buy is cheaply made and ugly. Why? Quality and beauty make us happier and healthier. Where can we find them?
colorful foam numbers all scattered about

Five Board Games We Play With Our 6-year-old to Learn Math

Who wants to do math worksheets? Not my 6-year-old. But hell happily play games for hours - so we do! Here are a few we've been playing lately.How is a book edited and produced? Here what's happening with my book on the slow road to publication.

Join our community!

Did you know a group of owls is called a parliament?

About

We're Jacqueline and Randy, a blogging duo with backgrounds in tech, robots, art, and writing, now raising our family in northern Idaho.

Our goal is to encourage deliberate choices, individual responsibility, and lifelong curiosity by sharing stories about our adventures in living, loving, and learning.

Learn more about us.


Connect:

whoo@deliberateowl.com

Start here

Curious about our life and journey? Here are some good places to start reading:

Jacqueline and Randy leaning their heads together smiling at the camera

A Blog About Education, Lifestyles, and Community

A brief history of how the Deliberate Owl came to be and why we're writing a blog about us, our lives, and how we're living out our values.
Priests in red and gold celebrate a traditional Latin Mass

Discovering the Traditional Catholic Mass

How I discovered the traditional Latin Mass a few years ago, why that discovery changed everything for me, and what was wrong with the Novus Ordo Masses I'd attended.